UM President Joe Echevarria sat down with Ross Dellenger at Yahoo and said out loud what everybody who follows this program has known for two years.
We're in the ACC, but we are not staying in the ACC if the math stays like this. And if Washington tries to trap us here, we'll go it alone.
His words: "you cannot lock us into a conference."
School presidents don't talk like that. They send out statements about valued partners and shared tradition. This one talks like a CEO running a board meeting, which makes sense, because he ran Deloitte. Steve "K9" Kim called him the anti-Tad Foote, and that's exactly right.
For the first time in a long time, the guy at the top of the university understands what the football program is worth.
Echevarria's case is simple. We won nearly every game you could win last year. We played for the national championship. We maxed out every dollar the ACC's model pays out. And we still landed at the same revenue level as Big Ten and SEC schools that don't invest like us or perform like us.
The Big Ten and SEC are the ones deciding where this sport goes, including the 24-team playoff, and the No. 1 team in the country sits at the kids' table without a vote.
He's not watching from a suite, either. He's at practice in a suit. He's on the sideline. The article describes him checking in on personnel decisions the way an NFL owner would, with his chief of staff Rudy Fernandez in the loop. He made the point that one week at No. 1 in football gets the university more attention than hiring a world-class scientist ever will.
It passed the Senate and now heads to the House. As written, it restricts conference expansion, which in practice locks Miami, Florida State, Clemson and North Carolina into the ACC. Florida's senators broke with their own party to vote against it. Those four schools are the only ACC members fighting it.
Echevarria called the expansion restriction illogical, the kind of provision no modern business would ever agree to. Being less polite, this is the ACC Protection Act. Jim Phillips wants it because the conference is worse without us, and this article was a slap in the face to the commissioner.
The House is where it dies. Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina carry real weight there.
If the bill passes, Echevarria put independence on the table. He likes our chances because we're a national brand, but he also admitted it's ugly for everything else. The article mentions Amazon and other streaming partners as possible fallbacks. I read this as Plan C, not Plan A. But hearing a sitting president say it publicly is wild.
We've been here before. Miami won multiple national titles as an independent, before the Big East and long before the ACC. Steve became a Canes fan in that era, and he remembers early-2000s rumors about Miami going independent with a network partner. His worry is the schedule. He thinks there could be collusion between conferences, an internal memo that says don't schedule Miami. Look at the '80s. Some years we played Notre Dame, Florida and Florida State every season plus LSU, Michigan and Michigan State. Other years it was San Jose State, San Diego State, Cincinnati and Toledo. You need seven or eight real games to make it work.
So that's the story. Miami made it clear, with no equivocation, that we intend to leave the ACC for a better conference. We're going to fight the Protect College Sports Act. And if we can't kill it, we're prepared to go independent.
We went through every quote from the Dellenger piece on the show, including the parts not included here. Watch the full breakdown on the CanesInsight YouTube channel and subscribe so you don't miss what happens when this bill hits the House floor.
We're in the ACC, but we are not staying in the ACC if the math stays like this. And if Washington tries to trap us here, we'll go it alone.
His words: "you cannot lock us into a conference."
School presidents don't talk like that. They send out statements about valued partners and shared tradition. This one talks like a CEO running a board meeting, which makes sense, because he ran Deloitte. Steve "K9" Kim called him the anti-Tad Foote, and that's exactly right.
For the first time in a long time, the guy at the top of the university understands what the football program is worth.
Echevarria's case is simple. We won nearly every game you could win last year. We played for the national championship. We maxed out every dollar the ACC's model pays out. And we still landed at the same revenue level as Big Ten and SEC schools that don't invest like us or perform like us.
The Big Ten and SEC are the ones deciding where this sport goes, including the 24-team playoff, and the No. 1 team in the country sits at the kids' table without a vote.
He's not watching from a suite, either. He's at practice in a suit. He's on the sideline. The article describes him checking in on personnel decisions the way an NFL owner would, with his chief of staff Rudy Fernandez in the loop. He made the point that one week at No. 1 in football gets the university more attention than hiring a world-class scientist ever will.
Step one: kill the bill
The order of operations is clear. Kill the Protect College Sports Act.It passed the Senate and now heads to the House. As written, it restricts conference expansion, which in practice locks Miami, Florida State, Clemson and North Carolina into the ACC. Florida's senators broke with their own party to vote against it. Those four schools are the only ACC members fighting it.
Echevarria called the expansion restriction illogical, the kind of provision no modern business would ever agree to. Being less polite, this is the ACC Protection Act. Jim Phillips wants it because the conference is worse without us, and this article was a slap in the face to the commissioner.
The House is where it dies. Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina carry real weight there.
2030, and the fallback nobody expected to hear
Kill the bill and the date to circle is 2030. That's when our cost to leave the ACC drops below $100 million. Adios.If the bill passes, Echevarria put independence on the table. He likes our chances because we're a national brand, but he also admitted it's ugly for everything else. The article mentions Amazon and other streaming partners as possible fallbacks. I read this as Plan C, not Plan A. But hearing a sitting president say it publicly is wild.
We've been here before. Miami won multiple national titles as an independent, before the Big East and long before the ACC. Steve became a Canes fan in that era, and he remembers early-2000s rumors about Miami going independent with a network partner. His worry is the schedule. He thinks there could be collusion between conferences, an internal memo that says don't schedule Miami. Look at the '80s. Some years we played Notre Dame, Florida and Florida State every season plus LSU, Michigan and Michigan State. Other years it was San Jose State, San Diego State, Cincinnati and Toledo. You need seven or eight real games to make it work.
So that's the story. Miami made it clear, with no equivocation, that we intend to leave the ACC for a better conference. We're going to fight the Protect College Sports Act. And if we can't kill it, we're prepared to go independent.
We went through every quote from the Dellenger piece on the show, including the parts not included here. Watch the full breakdown on the CanesInsight YouTube channel and subscribe so you don't miss what happens when this bill hits the House floor.
